


An ongoing set of inanities laid at the feet of Victor Hugo in reaction to his magnum opus

by Elsane



Category: Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen, Metafiction, Octopus, Pastiche, essentially crack, la muette de portici, peas, scientific fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-11-21
Packaged: 2017-12-04 16:51:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsane/pseuds/Elsane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people make doodle comics, I write flash fic.</p><p>Usually in hotel rooms while extremely jetlagged.</p><p>(sadly each chapter is a separate ficlet and AO3 won't let me sort the tags by chapter, so although the tags may vaguely suggest an epic adventure where Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Feuilly embark on a steampunk type voyage to the bottom of the sea  told entirely in Hugolian pastiche,  that story is alas not contained within this work. You cannot be more disappointed about this than I am.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which a revolution marches mostly on its stomach

The back room of the Café Musain was very loud and angry, and Combeferre had a headache. He looked down at his papers, realized he had transcribed two sentences that were supposed to conclude Enjolras' latest exhortation on the back of Bossuet's essay on starvation among the poor, and groaned.

Courfeyrac, across from him, cast him a sympathetic glance.

The meeting was not going well. Food had been scarce in the city all week, and if that kept anger bubbling through Paris as prices soared, the anger was of a dangerous sort, unhinged. Combeferre himself had used up most of his daily food budget on a single baguette that morning, and was feeling stretched and thin around the edges. Louison had set out much more wine than bread, which really wasn't helping.

"Where is Louison?" Courfeyrac demanded, for the sixth time, and sprang up from his chair.

"Wait -- " Combeferre called after him, and plunged his hand into his hair when Courfeyrac disappeared down the hallway.

"Don't worry," Jehan said, picking up the unfinished proofs Courfeyrac had left behind. "We don't keep him around for his prose." Jehan, subsisting this week mostly on the rarified wine of poetry, bent to writing, a fervid glow in his eyes, and Combeferre made a mental note to make sure somebody else had a chance to look over Jehan's revisions before they were committed to print.

That somebody else would probably end up being him.

Courfeyrac reappeared much later bearing a large basket, the only visible contents of which were half-rotted lettuce.

Combeferre blinked twice before tentatively supposing that Courfeyrac had embarked upon a unexpected method of smuggling guns.

Enjolras looked up from his quiet abstraction at the far end of the table. "That's never -- are those _guns_ , Courfeyrac?"

"It is something even more explosive than gunpowder," Courfeyrac proclaimed, and dropped the basket directly on top of the proofs.

"My dear Courfeyrac -- " began Combeferre.

"I know, I know! The proofs to the printer before midnight!" said Courfeyrac. "But men must fight to eat and eat to fight. "

He turned to the room at large, and flung out his arms.

"Friends! I am starving. We are all starving; the condition of our bodies makes transparent the conditions of our souls, starved of liberty! I have gone to fuel our endeavors, but this is the best I could find at this hour. Eat if you can stomach it! And never forget that this is the kind of provision that the King makes for his people. Look at this!" He thrust his hand into the basket, and held up a piece of badly bruised fruit.

"Black," he said, "is the color of this pear..."


	2. Concerning the origin of the name «the Petit Picpus»

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A snippet that Hugo’s editor didn’t make him cut from the convent chapters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies to the Quartier de Picpus, though as one folk etymology of the name is pique-puce (flea-bite) I feel octopi are an improvement.

..In that time there was a man who returned from the Petite Antilles bearing in a jar a small specimen of that species of creature known as octopus, or devilfish to the sailor, who is in his confined discomfort cruel to all things which move more freely. The octopus belonging to the former sailor was not the small brown type found in the waters to the north, nor yet the terrible devilfish that dooms ships and pursues its prey on land, but rather was small and delicately rosy, like the ear of a young girl, and uncommonly cunning. It would stretch out its grasping appendages to appropriate any small thing left by unwitting visitors near the jar where the former sailor housed it, and was apt to crawl out of the jar in search of greater horizons when the lid was left unsealed. This surely indicates a creature more adventurous than wise, but in this we may salute a brave and kindred spirit, and observe that even the dumb creatures of the earth may be moved by an innate impulse against confinement.

The former sailor, who had conceived an uncommon degree of affection for this creature of the deep, did not wish the octopus to die of desiccation in a far corner, and took thought on diversions for his strange pet. He was acquainted with an artist, who supported himself by painting girls for their lovers and saints for the church, and who left his brush fatally within tentacled reach of the octopus one day. It so transpired that the octopus saw fit to experiment with the brush, and rendered a creditable scribble upon the table, which would challenge the skill of most children under four years of age; it further transpired that the octopus, marvellous creature that it was, would select a brush with enthusiasm, from among all objects placed within its reach, and was observed to choose between colors, and to all appearances deliberately composed its scribblings.

Is it strange that a creature so far removed from us should seem to understand art, however dimly, and seek it out as the consolation, nay, the transformation of its durance? Surely this is not more strange than that a man may give himself over to song when confined to the cloister, or mortgage his eyes and his hands to the illumination of books. Art is free when the soul is imprisoned. In the octopus we may read the distillation of man.

This octopus, which gained a certain reputation in the quarter, the former sailor began to exhibit for a sou. He claimed the octopus would paint what it saw, and the credulous looked at the scribbles the octopus made, and were pleased to see, in their optimism, the faces of their best beloved, if not their own, and pay for this privilege. In this manner the former sailor made a living for himself, and the octopus, being a scientific marvel, garnered a certain amount of fame as the small octopus that drew [le petit pic-pus].

Worn by weather and hard usage, the sailor died while still young, and bequeathed his octopus to the convent, in the hope that it would have the charity to maintain the creature; whereupon it was incumbent upon the mothers vocal to decide what to do with a creature which partook of deviltry and yet exhibited a disconcerting sensitivity to the higher nature of art....


	3. Kelp fail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelp fail, or, three brief scenes of scientific fiction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun facts: (1) “Combeferre” apparently gets transliterated into Japanese as “konbu ferre”, which gets google translated to English as “kelp fail” (hat tip to [sclez](http://sclez.tumblr.com/post/49218235871/tags-from-pixivs-bank-of-les-mis-fanart)) and (2) kelp was an important historical source of [sodium carbonate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_ash). This explains everything except my thought processes

I.

“You ruined my collar,” Courfeyrac said plaintively, holding up the limp strip of linen by its strings.

“I did warn you it was experimental,” Combeferre said, leaning over. “What’s the matter? Look, the wine stain did come out.”

“It’s got _encrustations_ ," said Courfeyrac, fingering the salty outline where the detergent had dried in fine refolded fringes. “And look what it’s done to the dye —”

“Huh,” said Combeferre, and took the collar back. He held it up to the light, and ran his fingers along it. “It shouldn’t have done that. Perhaps I should have tried on bleached linen first. Your white collar, were you complaining about grease? Let me —”

“No,” said Courfeyrac. “I’m firing you as my laundress, effective immediately.”

“But if we can liberate women from the labour of household drudgery —” said Combeferre — “just imagine what we could do, as a society, if women didn’t have to waste half their time beating stains out of clothing —”

“Practice on someone else’s collars,” Courfeyrac said, and reclaimed his battered linen.

***

II.

“I don’t think they boiled this quite long enough,” said Joly, picking up the skull between a reluctant thumb and forefinger. Hair still dripped, limply, from its remaining scalp.

***

III.

“I can’t see,” said the second man attached to sniper duty, and Feuilly moved along to crouch behind his shoulder. The windowpane was full of bubbles, and strongly warped toward the base.

Feuilly pressed his mouth together impatiently. “Then open the window.”

“It’s well damned stuck,” the man — Dangeau — said.

Feuilly looked at him, then the glass. The latch was rusted shut. He smashed the window with the butt of his rifle, and the brittle glass shattered easily outward. Dangeau made an inarticulate sound of protest.

“There’s a lot worse is going to get broken today,” Feuilly said. “Get in position. I can hear footsteps.”

“What?” said Dangeau, and then, as the sound of marching echoed up from the street, “right.” He leveled his rifle out between the broken shards of the window.

Feuilly clapped him on the shoulder, and went five paces down the stripped hallway to his own station. The marching grew louder, and stopped.

“Who goes there?” the National Guard called below.

“The French Revolution!” Enjolras called back, voice carrying and disdainful.

Feuilly aimed his gun out of the window, his sights on the dim wavering feathers that marked the hats of the National Guard, and cocked his trigger back.


	4. Visualize whirled peas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> voksen wanted an AU where everyone was literally pod people, so I wrote one.

Who were these Friends of the Sprouts? They were not numerous; they were an offshoot of the twining vine of the Peagourde, and they dreamt of the day when peakind would escape the artificial boundaries imposed on them by the cruel histories of their pods, and seek a freer scope. They constituted a sort of pod on their own, formed of free association.

Yet they vanish from our history; their barricade fought bravely but, alone against the shears of the National Garden, could not stand; they were tragically cut down in their prime, their sugars converting to starch upon the barren ground. Only Marius Peamercy escaped, borne away by the stout tendrils of Pois Valpois, and surely he too would have succumbed to his wounds had not Valpois had the great foresight to bring him to the great store of fertilizer beneath the city…


	5. Do you hear the people sing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Les Amis go to the opera.

It had not, despite Courfeyrac’s promises, been the most successful night at the Opéra. Oh, the production had lived up to all of the splendors of its reputation, and Combeferre could appreciate the complexity of the libretto. But from the fourth act on, Enjolras had grown more and more coldly remote, until at the final curtain call he stayed seated, grim-jawed, and did not even applaud for Alphonse Nourrit, whose vocal control had been astounding, and much more admirable than his character’s control of the revolution.

The rest of the house had no such reservations. The applause swelled for Lise Noblet, taking her bows with a dancer’s long-limbed elegance. Bossuet and Courfeyrac hooted approval, and Noblet smiled and flung an arm out to the audience, as beautiful and faintly scandalous as anyone could want a prima ballerina to be.

"What I want to know," Joly was saying, barely audible over the clapping, "is how they make the lava. Did you _see_ that! It looked like it was on fire, but it couldn’t have been, the floorboards didn’t catch — “

The soprano came on for her curtain call, and Prouvaire, along with half the house, stood to call his bravas.

Combeferre said mildly, “They did have to write a libretto that could pass the censors, you know.”

Enjolras started, and turned to face him. “I do know. I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s only — ” his expression was not quite a smile, and not quite rueful — “from all I had heard about it, I had somehow come to expect a more encouraging evening.”

"The encouragement is, perhaps, that Paris persists on telling itself about the Neapolitan revolt. This is by far the most memorable rendition of Masaniello I have seen. If nothing else, the Opéra has, despite itself, made sure that no one can forget injustice will always come out, no matter how silenced the people are; oppression must always invite revolution. The mu — "

"Revolution!" said Enjolras. "That, a revolution! That was a mob. That was a calculated insult to the spirit and memory of France."

Courfeyrac, on the other side of Enjolras, leaned over. “Ah, Enjolras — do you know what excerpt everyone is buying? It is the duet from act two. _Amour sacré de la Patrie, Rends-nous l’audace et la fierté!_ — a catchy tune! Why, everyone is singing it.”

"Ha," said Combeferre, and let his smile grow to match Courfeyrac’s.

Enjolras did not appear mollified. “Someday, someday soon: let Paris sing about a revolution that _succeeds_.”

"It will happen," said Courfeyrac, "and we will write the lyrics for it."

"And then in the theatre," Combeferre said dryly, "they will stage something else entirely, because to be a serious opera, everyone must die in the last act. Only the failed revolutions make for successful art. Do clap a little bit, Enjolras, if only for the chorus."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auber's _La Muette de Portici_ premiered in 1828 to great success, and gained a reputation as a revolutionary work both musically and politically. The inflammatory and highly popular duet lyrics and translation are [here](http://elsane.dreamwidth.org/13624.html) if you are curious, and you can listen to it [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my8ypJd-URA).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Les Traverseurs de la Mer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/964991) by [genarti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti)




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